Want to increase your IQ? Get motivated

Motivation may play a much larger role in IQ scores and life events than …

For years, debate has raged about the validity of IQ tests. Critics claim that these tests are subject to all sorts of biases, but research shows that IQ results are good predictors of several aspects of life, including educational achievement, success in the workplace, and even longevity. These correlations suggest that IQ tests are measuring some important quality, but it may not be restricted to intelligence. A new study in PNAS suggests that motivation is very important in IQ scores, and may actually be the driving factor in some of these associations.

IQ tests are purported to maximize the subjects’ motivation via the sequence of the questions and how the test is administered, but this probably doesn’t mean much in real life. First, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis of previous studies to determine how important incentives were to IQ test results. The studies all compared subjects’ IQ test results under two conditions: with and without material incentives for performance.

Not surprisingly, material incentives did increase self-reported motivation, by an average of 0.64 standard deviations. Interestingly, the higher the subject’s baseline IQ was, the less an incentive increased performance. When incentives are small or absent, people with higher IQs perform closer to their maximum potential than those with lower IQs do.

In the second part of the study, the researchers studied a group of 251 boys in Pittsburgh who averaged just over 12 years of age. The boys were videotaped as they took a type of IQ test (called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children). A 15-minute section of each subject’s tape was coded by blind observers who judged their motivational level based on behaviors such as refusing to answer questions, quickly answering “I don’t know,” and asking when the test would be over.

The study then followed these boys for more than ten years, taking note of their achievements and major life events. Their IQ scores predicted many life outcomes, such as school performance, years of schooling, and employment history. However, once their motivation was taken into account, the amount of variance in explained by IQ scores went way down for some of these outcomes. But motivation was a much better predictor of some outcomes than others: it was highly associated with non-academic achievement (more motivated boys spent less time in jail and had better employment histories), while IQ scores were more associated with academic achievement.

Motivation may play a larger role in test results than previously thought. It seems that motivation is associated with some life events and achievement that were previously linked only to IQ scores. While this study has some limitations—such as homogeneity in the subjects’ ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds—it is another nail in the coffin for the predictive power of traditional IQ tests.

Huh, I knew from past research that test-taking motivation (and related factors like stereotype threat) have significant influences on cognitive ability test performance, but it's very interesting to see a meta-analysis. That effect size is larger than I would have expected.

The relationship between cognitive ability and something like motivation is also in line with past research - in the organizational performance literature, there's a good number of studies showing how variables like conscientiousness (a broad personality variable that includes components of general achievement orientation/motivation) predict different types of individual job outcomes, and can add explanatory power even for outcomes where cognitive ability remains a good predictor.

I had my IQ measured as a kid, with some decent but relatively meaningless results. I'd get it measured again, but I feel like I'll be either one of those types who brags about a high IQ while walking into a door or that the result too low and I take it again till I get results I want.

This article is pretty beyond obvious though. IQ is a measurement of the ability to learn, if you aren't motivated to learn then your IQ is more meaningless.

I recall a similar study many years ago that concluded a cetain amount of nervousness about school tests made for better performance. Probably related. Care enough to be a bit nervous and you're motivated. In that study both too much and too little nervousness lowered average test results.

Not really related to the article, but I still have a vivid memory of my first time seeing a division symbol. It showed up on an IQ test I took at four or five years old, and I just couldn't wrap my head around it or move past it despite the test taker's urging to solve only the problems/questions I knew how to solve.

Years later, I found out the IQ test was part of a regimen used to determine if I had ADD or not. ><

On topic, I’ve always found that the tests for which I feel driven to do well on tend to have the highest scores attached to them – regardless of how much studying I’d had under my belt. I used to turn tests into a kind of game (sometimes a game show, complete with an internal host and all), with imaginary cash rewards and adulation. LOL – it all makes so much sense now..

I tested high enough that if the IQ distribution were normal, I wouldn't exist (along with many other people). I'm part of a longitudinal study of comparable IQ folks selected at age 12, and over half of my peers have Ph.D.'s. To the best of my knowledge, there are no billionaires, governors, Senators, or Fortune 500 CEOs. You will get much farther as a top 0.01% driven workaholic than you will as a top 0.01% intellect. The combination of the two (a top 0.0001% or 1 in 100,000,000) comes closer to describing the necessary toolkit to be a Buffet, Gates, or Slim.

This is a great study to post about, but I think some aspects of the article itself are confusing (and your conclusion does not follow from the actual study).

First, there are missing or extra words in this very important sentence: "However, once their motivation was taken into account, the amount of variance in explained by IQ scores went way down for some of these outcomes." Also the use of IQ scores in this sentence is imprecise. Since the major technical advance of the study was to separately derive motivation-independent "intelligence" by taking the IQ score and factoring out motivation, I think you meant "the amount of variance that is explained by intelligence [deconvolved from the IQ scores and motivation levels] went way down for some of these outcomes." This would then be correct, but actually only half of the story.

The study reports that motivation accounts for most of the differences seen between the outcomes (which you tried to say above), AND, very importantly, also accounts for the differences seen in the original IQ scores. The importance of this becomes clear as one reads the discussion in the paper. What the authors suggest is that the IQ - outcomes relationship is an effect-effect one, not a cause-effect one. The common cause to both high IQ scores (in large part) and good life outcomes is motivation. The evidence that motivation is the bigger contributor to outcomes is that later success is more associated with motivation than IQ score, but this is tricky to pull apart since motivation and IQ are correlated, which is an important point of the paper.

So your conclusion that the paper "is another nail in the coffin for the predictive power of traditional IQ tests" is not supported by the study's findings. On the contrary, the study shows quite clearly that IQ test scores are very strongly predictive of success. The authors are just saying this can be as much due to differences in motivation influencing the IQ test scores as to differences in innate intelligence. "Likewise, Wechsler recognized that intelligence is not all that intelligence tests test: “from 30% to 50% of the total factorial variance [in intelligence test scores remains] unaccounted for...this residual variance is largely contributed by such factors as drive, energy, impulsiveness, etc. . . .”

It seems IQ tests measure motivation and intelligence... maybe we should call them MIQ tests.

I'm not sure that this test is evidence of motivation as a cause of high IQ scores. Perhaps the children that were observed to lack motivation lacked motivation because the test was harder for them than for the smart kids.

If I were not very bright, tests like that would be frustrating and boring too, and I'd want it to be over quickly, rather than be made to feel stupid for two hours.

"...it is another nail in the coffin for the predictive power of traditional IQ tests."

This is a ridiculous claim. You seem to be assuming or pretending that IQ tests are intended to measure anything other than potential academic outcomes. The objective of an IQ test is to predict future academic performance, assess anticipated academic performance, and measure underlying cognitive processes (e.g., working memory, processing speed, etc...) thought to be related to academic performance.

The public may have co-opted IQ tests into some sort of social status number, but that's not the intent. The results of this study are interesting. I haven't read the actual article yet though, so I cannot comment on the legitimacy of their methodology. One area of concern I have (from reading this write-up and another one about the same article) is that the researchers appeared to assume that social motivation is insignificant and only material motivation is important. Considering how the public treats IQ scores as some kind of vaunted measure of how good a person one is, there is clearly ample motivation to perform well for individuals that have been thoroughly assimilated by that culture.

Not to be mean about it, but this interpretation of the results seems to go too far with the results. Some parts of this write-up are very good and appropriate, but don't draw your own conclusions please.

I tested high enough that if the IQ distribution were normal, I wouldn't exist (along with many other people). I'm part of a longitudinal study of comparable IQ folks selected at age 12, and over half of my peers have Ph.D.'s. To the best of my knowledge, there are no billionaires, governors, Senators, or Fortune 500 CEOs. You will get much farther as a top 0.01% driven workaholic than you will as a top 0.01% intellect. The combination of the two (a top 0.0001% or 1 in 100,000,000) comes closer to describing the necessary toolkit to be a Buffet, Gates, or Slim.

If you got every answer correct on a standardized IQ test, the results still would not exceed a normal distribution. IQ tests are standardized around a normal distribution, thus it is impossible to exceed it. However, they may have concluded at some point that the IQ test was an inadequate representation of your cognitive processes and thus discarded the results. Claims of people with IQ's over 200 are illogical as the tests have a range (almost consistently) of 40 - 160. I know of one test that extends its range up to 200, but there was an inadequate standardization sample at that point and the results are considered uninterpretable.

That said, nobody should ever make the claim that a high IQ score guarantees success, it is simply significantly, positively correlated with it (generally in the range of 0.60), which means it explains a significant amount of the variation in success of individuals in other areas including health and social relationships.

If you got every answer correct on a standardized IQ test, the results still would not exceed a normal distribution. IQ tests are standardized around a normal distribution, thus it is impossible to exceed it. However, they may have concluded at some point that the IQ test was an inadequate representation of your cognitive processes and thus discarded the results. Claims of people with IQ's over 200 are illogical as the tests have a range (almost consistently) of 40 - 160. I know of one test that extends its range up to 200, but there was an inadequate standardization sample at that point and the results are considered uninterpretable.

The standard Mensa test has a range, and obviously if someone gets all the answers correct (or close) or all of them wrong (or statiscally so), then it's impossible to see how high or low an IQ someone has.

My sister took the test and got the result that her IQ was beyond 165 (or 155, whatever the max. was), but they could still pinpoint it by making a second test with an adapted range. So 200+ seems plausible to test if you figure that it takes several tests.

She never took the second test though, as she had to pay for it, and she only really took the first one because she wanted to be at Mensa meetings (turned out they sucked).

Hmm, if you fall below the measurable range, Mensa probably doesn't offer a test to see how stupid one is. That's not really fair.

edit:

Before my sister joined Mensa I kinda viewed Mensa as a sick concept. The concept of people who couldn't stand being together with people of average intelligence.

Now I know, that at least the local chapter, is for people who can't really function socially in normal society. Like people you'd consider borderline autistic. She didn't fit in.

I scored a 1260 on the original SAT when I was 12. (After the two re-normalizations since, that's closer to a 1400 out of 1600. No idea how it translates on the 2400 point SAT)

Also correcting my typo before someone else does: "0.000001%"

I understand what you're saying (and this is addressed to your comment as well Hinton), but my point (and I'm mainly trying to dispel some misconceptions regarding IQ tests) is that IQ tests alone are incapable of providing the results you're indicating. In the study you linked, they had to rely on other measures and estimates to derive what they would anticipate as a probable "IQ representation". There is no single test that will provide these results as they don't have a standardization sample. To illustrate, IQ scores are normed around a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. That means that after they've used a "sufficiently large" sample to evaluate the test, then (roughly speaking) they determine that the average that individuals will get right is x (~68% of the population will score at least at that level). They then determine, using intervals of standard deviations, the probable frequency of correct responding for above average and below average individuals. When it comes to very high scores, they are incapable of norming the test on individuals beyond a certain point; there just aren't enough people that scored that high to establish a meaningful comparison group (e.g., we have 3 people that scored this high, we cannot make meaningful interpretations about that).

For very high scores, the best that can be done seems to be estimating from a collection of performance measures (I suppose SAT scores is fine, though it's more heavily academic and less about cognitive processes) and extrapolating a possible IQ score equivalent. Another thing to consider as well, IQ tests are generally used to identify students that may need help in their academics, *typically* we could expect that students who score very high will do alright in their academics.

Now I know, that at least the local chapter, is for people who can't really function socially in normal society. Like people you'd consider borderline autistic. She didn't fit in.

Er, just to quickly address this point as well, most people that are intellectually gifted actually do quite well socially. Granted, we can probably all think of people that were very smart academically, but socially inept, but in some cases it may simply be undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome.

Now I know, that at least the local chapter, is for people who can't really function socially in normal society. Like people you'd consider borderline autistic. She didn't fit in.

Er, just to quickly address this point as well, most people that are intellectually gifted actually do quite well socially. Granted, we can probably all think of people that were very smart academically, but socially inept, but in some cases it may simply be undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome.

I didn't make a point otherwise. I was talking about people who needed Mensa to find a venue to function socially.

edit:

On your post before. Do you really need anyone to compare with to pin a number on people? Just because someone is the only person who can think 10 moves ahead in chess for example, that doesn't mean you can't compare it in a meaning full way to people who can do 2-6 moves.

I don't know how IQ tests work, but I kinda have a feeling that Mensa tests follow some sort of mathemathical formula.

Now I know, that at least the local chapter, is for people who can't really function socially in normal society. Like people you'd consider borderline autistic. She didn't fit in.

Er, just to quickly address this point as well, most people that are intellectually gifted actually do quite well socially. Granted, we can probably all think of people that were very smart academically, but socially inept, but in some cases it may simply be undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome.

I didn't make a point otherwise. I was talking about people who needed Mensa to find a venue to function socially.

Fair enough. From my experience, most people seem to assume that highly intelligent people necessarily lack social skills (as if it is some kind of compensatory system). I wrongly assumed you had the same expectation. Mensa, in general, is simply supposed to be an organization for the intellectually gifted, however evidently different chapters may have different objectives or be comprised of different sorts of demographics.

I think people are largely unhappy to accept the degree of similarity that all humans have. We overwhelmingly have the same abilities, to a shockingly close level. Even the best track star on Earth only runs about twice as fast (when setting a world record) than a reasonably fit individual does. And then if you compare to someone who's practiced, the difference between a PE class student at the fastest man on earth is little more than 30% difference.

We will probably be stunned when we create genuine artificial intelligence to learn just how insufficient all of our minds are - just how close our minds are to true genius and how real evolutionary factors didn't want us to be that way. Honestly, sitting down and concentrating on an IQ test is probably an maladaptive behavior, to be specific in biology terms. It doesn't help the individual particularly. It WORKS to view the world through emotional lenses and rationalism was always the exception. Of course someone needs a strong environmental push in order to take the task of intellectual development seriously.

I took the IQ test when I was a young 'un and I can remember not being motivated to take it or any test because they all seemed to easy and stupid. Nevertheless, I consistently scored in the top 1 percent of every exam they threw at me. I scored 1580 on the 1600 point SAT with no prior review, I just was just a bit apathetic and more than a bit arrogant. This all changed when a douche of a jazz band instructor told me I couldn't play and was useless, right after winning a local jazz award. I don't why that hit me so hard, but something in me snapped and I became paranoid about failing on tests. To the point where, I just avoided them altogether. This extended to college, where I avoided classes that had anything other than written exams, which led me into a major I wasn't really interested in. I have been working on overcoming my paranoia of tests, but even though I am not that much older I can guarantee that I wouldn't be able to score as high on exams I took in my youth.

On the Mensa topic, as a card carrying member who lived on both coasts, their local groups vary tremendously from region to region. Are high-IQ people stranger than average and more egotistical? You betcha. But I do like its slice of the population better than any other broad division of people I've experienced. There are cliques and strata within most groups and Mensa is no different.

research shows that IQ results are good predictors of several aspects of life, including educational achievement, success in the workplace, and even longevity

Actually no, it doesn't. What research does show is that a shockingly high number of "scientists" actually haven't the slightest damn clue what they're doing, a side-effect of which is being unable to recognize when "research" isn't legitimate and thus isn't appropriate for mention in a scientific news article.

In this context, proving correlation tells us jack-all that's useful. Get back to me when they have legitimate data to support a causal link... I'll be taking a nap over here in the meantime.

The main illustration of these studies Is the low quality level that generally characterizes this kind of work. People make limited studies based on some ridiculously over simplified model of human behavior. Then they make wild generalizations based on the results.

Most people are smart enough to know that all people don't look exactly alike. We don't have the same height, the same sex, the same size sexual organs, or the same sexual behavior. There is some influence presumably of food availability on the average height of a population. But, we don't know how to turn short people into long people. Nor can we teach dwarfs how to grow into a normal height. Certainly experience and motivation play a significant part in sexual behavior. But, the experience of the medical profession has established that it is professionally incompetent to encourage patients to try to change their sexual preferences through some kind of behavioral therapy.

The dimensions of human intellectual, motivational, and social skills are far less well understood than a simple physical dimension like height. But the fact is that all human behavior is the outcome of physical processes implemented with the machinery constructed from a person's genes. That machinery works the way that it works. All people are part of a species with common characteristics. But each person is an individual with his or her our own particular set of genes and biochemical system that works at least a little differently than anyone else's.

Based on my experience with the various peer groups of people that I have known well enough to have some ability to evaluate their intellectual capability, I have no doubt that people have different intellectual abilities that are to some degree measured by various kinds of aptitude tests. But, we have no real way to know how many dimensions are really needed to characterize those abilities . Nor do we have any measure of how much those dimensions vary between different people.

Clearly all human behavior depends on learning. It is also virtually certain that environments which systematically discourage particular people are going to prevent most of those people from realizing their full potential. But it is also the case that people who come from privileged environments and do well, don't usually do equally well at everything. It is also common for substantial differences in intellectual abilities to exist within families. It is also quite possible that genetic factors play a part in how responsive different people are to various kinds of motivational encouragement or discouragement.

Success is another abstract term with an unclear concrete meaning. Success usually means achieving some status that is recognized by some kind of social group. Generally, achieving that status is going to depend on social skills that are not measured by intellectual aptitude tests. Usually success depends on managing other people and deriving benefit from the product of their labor. The skills involved in achieving that success are central to human biology. People don't have to go to school to learn those skills. But we do have to cope with the impact that factors like social class, sex, race, and ethnic identity play in the formation of human groups.

Then there is the concept of gifted. That concept seems to be associated with some kind of ability that is viewed to have some value to a particular culture even though it is an ability that has no history of biological value. Society wants to treat gifted people differently because there is some value in encouraging their gift that is not recognized by our core biology. The ability to do mathematics is a good example. A large part of our mathematical heritage is the result of the work of a very small number of specially gifted individuals. People don't make it as theoretical physicists or pure mathematicians without special gifts. Even among those who do make it, there appears to be a large difference between those who are just good and the very small number of top tier creators. This distinction is almost certainly not because there is something essentially hard to mathematics. All athletes depend on a very good implicit understanding of the physics of motion. Its just that abstract reasoning about mathematical concepts is an activity with very little biological value except in the developed society of the modern world. Even in our world there is a limited need for people to do that kind of work.

"Interestingly, the higher the subject’s baseline IQ was, the less an incentive increased performance. When incentives are small or absent, people with higher IQs perform closer to their maximum potential than those with lower IQs do."

If motivation was the larger factor, that difference would be nonexistent. By symmetry, those performing at the lowest levels should have a similar result.

Motivation is required for any activity. It is constantly present in any positive behavior worth measuring. So, ascribing any particular gift or ability solely due to motivation is vacuous because there's no differential diagnosis possible. I was a pretty good runner in speed and distance in HS. But I'm relatively short and have no fast-twitch muscle. Motivation was not going to get me to the next level. The physiology was absent.

There is a dark and corrosive effect of the mindset that motivation is the answer. Everyone who cannot reach the next level of performance in any particular activity will be suspected of slacking off. Even if not actually accused, they may well internalize it. We're all made differently. It's OK.

While this study has some limitations—such as homogeneity in the subjects’ ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds—it is another nail in the coffin for the predictive power of traditional IQ tests.

Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Traditional IQ tests are excellent predictors of many types of success and ability, including academic. There's a strong correlation, but of course it's only a correlation, and no one ever claimed otherwise. This study only concludes that IQ test results may measure motivation as well as intelligence, and that measures of motivation independent of IQ test results can also correlate with success and ability.

OperaMalenky wrote:

Huh, I knew from past research that test-taking motivation (and related factors like stereotype threat) have significant influences on cognitive ability test performance, but it's very interesting to see a meta-analysis..

"Stereotype threat" in particular is an abused notion. Even when stereotype threat is removed by corrective pre-test conditioning or otherwise corrected for, the well-documented achievement gaps between certain groups still manifest themselves. Stereotype threat at best adds a very small additional gap to what is otherwise already a very large gap. Additionally, the validity of assumptions behind the name "stereotype threat" and much work in the subject can be called into question because the same pre-test conditioning used to remove stereotype threat in experiments (e.g., stressing to subjects that a test does not correlate with intelligence), sometimes also produces correspondingly higher scores in the non-underperforming group--suggesting that "stereotype threat" has little to do with stereotypes and affects anyone with high self-doubt or low personal esteem regardless of group identity. In other words, a more universal phenomenon which regards self-esteem and has nothing directly to do with stereotypes or group identities may have been wrongly politicized, ethnicized, and gendered.

I am one possibly one of the least motivated people alive (sometimes I wonder if it is worth the effort to go on breathing), yet I consistently score pretty high on IQ tests. I guess this means that I am either a genius, or that their methodology could use some work.

Joseph, you weren't motivated to read this article very carefully either, lol (wait, isn't reading comprehension part of IQ?). Or else you'd know that having a high IQ means the motivation factor had less effect.

research shows that IQ results are good predictors of several aspects of life, including educational achievement, success in the workplace, and even longevity

Actually no, it doesn't. What research does show is that a shockingly high number of "scientists" actually haven't the slightest damn clue what they're doing, a side-effect of which is being unable to recognize when "research" isn't legitimate and thus isn't appropriate for mention in a scientific news article.

In this context, proving correlation tells us jack-all that's useful. Get back to me when they have legitimate data to support a causal link... I'll be taking a nap over here in the meantime.

Huh? I think you're off your game today, because I know you know you don't have to have a causal relationship to have a predictive one. The research does show that IQ results are good predictors, which is only to say it correlates well with them.

Much like wearing a batting helmet is a good predictor of getting hit with fastballs.

I think people are largely unhappy to accept the degree of similarity that all humans have. We overwhelmingly have the same abilities, to a shockingly close level. Even the best track star on Earth only runs about twice as fast (when setting a world record) than a reasonably fit individual does. And then if you compare to someone who's practiced, the difference between a PE class student at the fastest man on earth is little more than 30% difference.

This is an excellent point, and I'm surprised how seldom people seem to acknowledge it.

Kate Shaw Yoshida / Kate is a science writer for Ars Technica. She recently earned a dual Ph.D. in Zoology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior from Michigan State University, studying the social behavior of wild spotted hyenas.